Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday

These words are written
for a yong man, one
Fernando Magana, whom
I never met. Eighteen
years old, the high school
student of our friend, Mary,
who was leaving on this day,
Easter Sunday, for his funeral.
Of Fernando I know only
that he died this past week
of a bullet on the front porch
of his home, returning
from the mall. Perhaps there
he had said something
or done something in breach
of the arcane laws of gangbangers:
it seems a carload of them chose
to follow him home and put
a bullet in him for his offense.
We saw the picture of a sweet-
looking young man with shaven
head and sad, sleepy eyes, and
grieved with our friend Mary,
who had nutured him, despite
his learning disability, through
high school years. His was a life
too brief, and brutally cut short
by the kind of senseless act
of violence that young males
of our human species all too often
resort to in their terrible
confusion as to who they are
and what the purpose of their life
might be. I pity Fernando
and his family. I pity
those young men who learn nothing
but territory, and wounded vanity,
and rage, and vengeance. I pity
all of us, who raise them
in our midst, through ignorance
and neglect, and through our
inability to care for those
who need it most. No war hero,
he, Fernando, died no less in war.
I confess I do not myself believe
in resurrection, and cannot
visualize a heaven, as the Catholics
do. I do, though, wish one
for Fernando.